REMOTESENSINGFORAGRICULTURE

Soil cover by vegetation has the potential to increase the ecosystem services provided by agricultural systems. In particular the introduction of cover crops in crop rotations provides an opportunity to increase soil carbon storage. Remote sensing data can now be used to estimate soil cover rates, as shown in the visual below. For this visual, the soil cover rate of each field of the Limagne plain (France) has been estimated from the NDVI index calculated from Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite images.

Visual

For the color scale above, a ground cover rate of 0.3 indicates, for example, that the average ground cover by vegetation was 30% (average for a given field over the entire study period). The first thing to be noticed is the effect of crop rotation, with higher soil cover for rotations that include temporary grassland. But such a visual can be used to compare fields with similar crop rotations, in order to identify the best practices to achieve high soil cover. For this purpose, markers have been added to the map to identify fields with the highest soil cover for three types of rotation (maize only, wheat only or wheat and maize). It would be interesting to conduct field surveys to identify the practices implemented by the farmers that cultivate those fields.

This type of indicator can also be used to grant subsidies to farmers who include cover crops in their rotations.

Given that organic carbon in soils is more than double atmospheric carbon, future changes in soil carbon stocks will have a major impact on the extent of future climate change.